Health and dis-ease

Part Two

My partner had two rounds of a Rituxan-Fludara chemo combination and now is on a different chemo treatment.  He is receiving Treanda, a trade name for bendamustine.  It was developed in communist East Germany in the 1960’s and recently was approved by the FDA for use in treating CLL. 

This is the chemo that is acting like all the fearsome chemos people dread.  On the two days of the month when he gets the infusion, his skin becomes burning hot, although he doesn’t have a fever.  He has lethargy that mimics (in my eyes) mononucleosis.  He has had weight loss due to nausea and lack of appetite.  Although he hasn’t vomited, he is queasy and dizzy.  In addition, his sleep is totally disrupted.  Mostly, he contends, he is not sleeping at all.  However, he does lie in a chair in a semi-comatose stupor trying to sleep.  I have seen him sleep for short 20-minute periods.  I suspect, though, that whatever sleep he “accomplishes” never reaches the REM stage.  This lasts the entire month through to the next treatment.

His oncologist has added a post-chemo injection of Neulasta.  This or Neupogen are used to combat neutropenia, a condition of having a dangerously low number of neutrophils (one of the types of white blood cells). A neutropenic person is highly susceptible to becoming ill from the normal bacteria carried on his own person.  

It is so blastedly ironic.  Leukemia is a disease of too many white blood cells, yet in treating it the patient may suffer from too few.

Do you want to know what bravery is?  Bravery is the willingness to go back for three more cycles of this.

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